


The Well-Acquainted Thieves

by astudyinpanda



Series: Thieves in Distress [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Bisexuality, Complicated Relationships, Dibella help me tag this, Don't copy to another site, Drama, Friends to Lovers, Immorality, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, Pegging, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex Magic, Sex Toys, Sexual Fantasy, Thieves Guild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 18:51:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20344999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astudyinpanda/pseuds/astudyinpanda
Summary: Brynjolf and Tonilia commiserate about missing the F!Dragonborn between chapter 3 and the epilogue of "The Legion Came to Riften, to Steal Away a Thief."





	The Well-Acquainted Thieves

In the Ragged Flagon, Tonilia stood staring across the water at the Ratway door, again. A bottle of mead sat open and forgotten on the wooden railing. Brynjolf crept up and stole a sip from it to distract her.

"I'm still drinking that!" She had to turn away from the door to grab for it.

Brynjolf held the bottle above his head, well out of the little fence's reach. "Not so far as I could see, lass. Looks like free--" Tonilia drove a sharp elbow into his sternum, bending him over and bringing her mead close enough to snatch from his hand. Well, he'd earned that.

After a deep pull from the bottle to confirm her ownership of it, Tonilia said, "So, what do you want?"

"You miss her," Brynjolf said. "I do too."

Tonilia made a disgusted noise and turned back toward the Ratway. "You didn't show it when she was leaving. You should've seen her face when you called her a murderer, but you wouldn't look at her."

"Aye, that was the worst way to say it." He'd said a lot of things he regretted after she let him out of the embassy's dungeon.

"As soon as she got those potions down your gullet she was out into the night so fast she nearly left her shadow behind. She didn't even..." Tonilia took another drink. "She hardly said goodbye." And now Brynjolf and Tonilia had both spent the past month unable to avoid noting his protege's empty bed, her favorite chair in the Flagon, the way Vekel's salt stores lasted for weeks now that she wasn't sneaking pouches of it from his supply.

Ah, Vekel. The delusional man thought he could keep the attention of a world-wise woman like Tonilia, when a beautiful foreigner stole enchanted swords for her every other day. If the bartender noticed that his and Tonilia's on-again-off-again generally went off when Brynjolf's protege stayed in the cistern for a few nights, he never mentioned it in Brynjolf's hearing. Byrnjolf waited until Vekel was busy checking something in the back before he said, "We could say our own goodbyes to her, if it'd make you feel better."

Tonilia raised an eyebrow at him. "Together?"

"Why suffer alone when we're in the same pain?"

Tonilia's lovely lips quirked up into a full smile, sad though it was. "It's not quite the same. You've never missed her from your bed."

"Not having had that particular pleasure doesn't stop a man from imagining it." Those hungry eyes devouring his body, her nimble fingers on him... Brynjolf's protege had never led him on, not even when he did his best to charm her, but that had almost made the longing worse. Watching her and Tonilia together in the Flagon, close as one soul in two bodies on a cold night... He could retreat to imagination or go mad with desire.

Tonilia drained her bottle and set it in a basket with other empties Vekel would send back to the meadery. As she passed him on her way toward the bar, she said, "All right. But we do it my way." She didn't wait for his answer. She just walked to the bedrooms furthest from the bar.

After a few moments, Brynjolf followed the path Tonilia had taken. He found her at her bedside, watching for him. When he went to her he'd intended to ask what she'd meant, but she drew him down to sit on her bed, stood between his spread legs, and kissed him. Her tongue delved boldly into his mouth, and yes, he could imagine his protege kissing this way. Tonilia's Thieves Guild leathers felt unbearably rough as his hands explored the shape of her.

It was a while before Tonilia let him catch enough breath to ask, "What way is your way, lass?"

"I can't very well picture myself with her if I'm riding your cock or your bearded face." Those words in that order from Tonilia's lips left Brynjolf feeling uncomfortably confined by his pants. "But there's a way she and I were together sometimes, that I've gotten good at." She slid a drawer in her nightstand open. Inside, among clutter and rolled socks, lay a smooth piece of laqured wood shaped like a man's member, though without the defining features.

It'd been years since Brynjolf had been with a man. He hadn't much desired one. But Tonilia was no man, and the woman they both yearned for wasn't either. Considering his protege's gift for getting into places no one expected her to enter, a toy like this held a certain appeal.

"Sure, lass," Brynjolf said. "Let's do this your way."

Knowing his protege's mischievous habits, she'd tease at least as much as Tonilia did. Though her fingers moved smoothly over buckles and clasps, it seemed to take an age for she and Brynjolf to undress. Through it all she sat straddling his thigh, her knee pressed against him, rocking maddeningly, kissing him when it didn't hinder their progress.

Still, this wasn't truly his protege. He and Tonilia lacked the trust they'd both shared with their absent friend, and Brynjolf's size made him a potential threat. He took care not to hold Tonilia too tightly or make her feel trapped. There'd been a knife in the drawer she'd opened, and she'd have hidden more blades within arm's reach. Tugs at his waist and calf meant that she'd already divested him of several of his daggers. He made no move to stop her.

Once they'd finally escaped their clothes, she dropped her pillow on the floor near the wall, out of sight from the door. "Kneel here."

He stood to do it, but froze before he reached the spot. Without his boots, the stone floor felt like the floor in the Thalmor embassy's dungeon. The wall looked too much like the one the elves had bound him to for hours, exhausted and aching, before they'd hurt him more than he'd ever hurt in his life. His heart thudded with fear, not desire, even while his other senses told him that he was safe. "I can't, lass. Not there."

Tonilia smiled like she thought he was joking until she read his expression and knew he'd spoken in earnest. "All right," she said. "Near the bed, then, with your hands on the mattress?" When she moved her pillow there and pulled him down to the bed for another long kiss, he found that he could. There was plenty of space around him now. The wall was just a shadow at the edge of his vision.

The heat of Tonilia's skin as she settled behind him was the opposite of the cold loneliness of that dungeon cell. Her hands covered his where they clutched the mattress, then soothed over his arms, his shoulders, his back. "I don't want to hurt you," she whispered in his ear. "Just tell me if I do anything you don't like. I'll stop."

The evening had gotten much more personal than he'd intended it to. "Is there anything else you'd like from me, lass? My fingers are larger than hers, but I've been told I have talent."

Tonilia laughed quietly as her hands glided over his arse. She put the toy and a soft leather halter for it on the bed. "She got this thing enchanted by mages in Winterhold, if you'll believe that." The pop of a small vial being uncorked sent a shiver of anticipation down his spine. "I doubt she traveled all that way just for this, but I appreciate it," Tonilia continued. "It'll feel good to me too."

"That sounds like her." No distance would stop his protege once she set her sight on something she wanted, especially if she wasn't the only one who'd benefit.

Tonilia hadn't exaggerated about her skill at this. She was almost too gentle, working him open on her slick fingers while her breasts slid against his back. A spot she brushed within him made him gasp and push against her. While he fought to keep quiet she touched it again, and again. "If you want to enjoy your time with that magic toy of hers, use it soon." His voice was wrecked with wanting his protege, or Tonilia, or almost anyone in his current state.

It was the work of a moment for Tonilia to step into her halter, and then she was back, kissing him. "Remember," she whispered, "You say stop, I'll stop."

"By the Nine, don't stop now," he groaned.

Her first shallow stroke into him was decadent, after all the teasing. His breath caught in his throat as she pressed deeper, sighing sweetly. When her hips met his, the toy's length inside him stilled, firm and impossible for dark memories to distract him from. "Divines, yes," he whispered. "What does that feel like to you?"

"A sort of hum, or light touch, maybe?" she said. "Right where I want it. It's..." She sighed again as she drew herself away slowly.

The sliding pressure inside him made him shut his mouth tight on a moan. Once she started moving, Tonilia kept up that languid pace. Her hands rode lightly on his waist, adjusting his position until each stroke drove his breath from his body while pleasure swirled through him. "Is this..." Tonilia pushed into him again. The two of them breathed as one. Her thighs trembled against his. "Is this how you take her?"

"Yes," Tonilia whispered. Brynjolf let go of the mattress with one hand to hold himself back at that. His mind's eye offered a shadowed image of Tonilia braced above his protege on the bed, filling her while she gasped with the same pleasure coursing through him. The steady roll of Tonilia's hips seemed to freeze time, contracting all the world to her warm skin against his, the hardness inside him, the entrancing sounds she made, her scent mixed with the slightly floral substance she'd used to ease the toy into him.

Untold moments later, Brynjolf asked, "And just... How long... Does she let you do this?" His protege was patient, but not endlessly so.

Tonilia laughed, which produced a sensation Brynjolf was quite sure he'd never experienced before. "Some nights, until we're both a tingling, sweating mess and we can barely stand a moment more. Usually, less than that."

Eventually, they'd be interrupted here, by people who wanted to use the other beds in the room if not by someone looking for Tonilia or Brynjolf specifically. "And when it's less?" Brynjolf asked.

"Touch yourself and find out." Tonilia's pace and force sped up until she rocked him into his hand with each thrust.

Divines, how the two women must look when they were together, with his protege's clever fingers rubbing herself while Tonilia fucked her. "I'm close, lass."

With every thrust Tonilia was pulling away less and less, burying the length of the toy inside him. One hand left his hip and curled around his cock, and that was too much for him. He clenched his teeth to keep quiet as he came in thick spurts over their hands and the floor beneath her bed. Tonilia bit his shoulder to muffle the sound of her own release. While she still shook against him, he brought her hand to his mouth and licked her clean. She keened softly and thrust into him once more.

They knelt like that a moment before she slid the toy free of him. He stayed where he was, head resting on the mattress, while she padded to a bucket of water in the corner to wash down a bit. He blearily searched for a cloth he used to wipe up his own mess. And to think, all that had been going on between Tonilia and his protege, in this very bed, and he'd hardly known about it at all.

They dressed in silence. She twisted one of the straps on her top as she secured it, and he moved slowly to straighten it for her. His measured movements now were born of a satisfying calm, rather than an effort not to frighten her.

Tears shone in Tonilia's eyes, though, and that gave him pause. "All right, lass?" he murmured.

Tonilia smiled, though she rubbed at a tear that trickled down her cheek. "Yes. I'm sorry. That was... It almost felt like you and her here together, in a way."

"Don't apologize for a good time." Brynjolf wrapped her in his arms. It felt a little like the few times he'd held his protege this way, for one reason or another. That'd most often been due to her twisting an ankle jumping off something, and needing help returning to the cistern to rest.

Tonilia hugged him back. "Do you think she'll come to Riften again someday?"

If nothing else, an assassination order was bound to bring her to the city again, but he'd keep dark thoughts like that to himself. "Aye, someday." Maybe then, he'd be able to talk to her more civilly. And if he were very lucky, she and Tonilia might trust him with another experience like this one. Assuming they all survived that long, or Tonilia and Vekel didn't work things out once and for all... Life was full of uncertainties. At least Brynjolf and Tonilia had found a few moments of peace, and a confidence between them that they could rely on in the dark days ahead.


End file.
